Child Welfare Services

Child Welfare Services are offered in the areas of service that include:

Help with parenting issues / techniques: Case management can help parents to connect to support groups and services, provide consultation, and develop plans to meet goals for the parents and children.

Minor parents: Assessment and support service offered to minor youth who are pregnant or have an infant to provide care.

Parent Support Outreach Program: Parent support can be referred by any affiliated service including school, public health, income maintenance, or the child protection screening team. If this service is referred, the assigned worker will contact the family to ask if they would like to consider receiving services. If the family meets criteria, they can receive some supportive services.

School Liaison Services: Services can be designed to improve your child's behavior and functioning within the family, school and community. There are a variety of community services available. They may include in-home service people who will help you with your child’s behaviors, provide individual and/or family counseling and parenting education. Other Services may be used depending on your child's specific needs.

Interpreter/Translator: Le Sueur County uses collaborative funds to provide an on-staff Spanish interpreter. The goal is to help those with English as their second language to understand and be understood. This worker helps families in income maintenance, Public Health Nursing, Child and Family Services and any other division as needed to help make sure the client’s needs are met.

Truancy Intervention: For those youth who are having attendance issues and who meet the definition of habitually truant for the first time, Le Sueur County offers diversion from court proceedings with the goal of addressing the child’s attendance issues and keeping.

Interagency Early Intervention Committee (IEIC)

The purpose of the Le Sueur County Interagency Early Intervention Committee is to develop coordination between agencies to encourage early identification and services for young children with special needs.

Even though each child develops at his/her own pace, your child should be able to do the same things other children the same age are doing. However, this may not be true if your child was born prematurely, with low birth weight or with special needs. If you have questions about your child's development, or would like more information, we encourage you to contact us.

Each year there are children born with medical problems, handicapping conditions or special needs. Such conditions are not always easy to discover because not all children do the same things at the same ages.

The early childhood years are critical ones; children begin to notice the world, explore, relate to others and begin to speak. This is often the best time to begin intervention because this is when many skills normally first appear. Most basic language, physical and social skills are learned before two years of age.

To assist parents and their children in our communities, a large network has been formed called the Le Sueur County Interagency Early Intervention Committee.

Who Should Be Referred?

Children from birth to three years of age: with possible developmental delays in speech/language, motor, cognitive or social/emotional areas.

Children with an increased risk of developmental delays due to multiple biological or environmental risk factors, such as low birth weight, prematurity, failure to thrive, inadequate health care, family instability or low income, disturbed parent-child interactions, family isolation or lack of support.